BBC to hop out of Kangaroo?

Posted by Steve Mullins Thursday, December 4th, 2008

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The UK Competition Commission doesn’t much like the look of Kangaroo, the proposed video-on-demand venture between the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, believing that it will have too much power in the nascent VOD market. The question now is whether the Beeb, the dominant partner, will want to go to the bother of rejigging Kangaroo. After all, it has in the iPlayer the UK’s dominant online-TV service and could easily go it alone. It simply doesn’t need the hassle especially as it’s coming under scrutiny over future funding anyhow. A BBC withdrawal would be bad news for ITV, which has achieved little online, and even worse news for C4 which is preparing to ditch its 4OD offering for Kangaroo. Plus it might leave the door open for another outfit to do the aggregator job. Look out for Hulu.